DATES:Thursday, December 6 at 8 pmFriday, December 7 at 8 pmSaturday, December 8 at 8 pm

Portland-based theater company PETE Ensemble brings the work of adventurous playwright Robert Quillen Camp (Chekhov Lizardbrain, All Hands) back to New York after an absence of several years. A provocative performance piece inspired by Nietzsche’s lectures on education, HOW TO LEARN nestles a professor’s story of the banalities of contemporary academic life within an immersive sound environment that moves the piece into a surreal and affecting exploration of the imagination.

JACOB COLEMAN (performer) is a director, performer, teacher, and founding member of PETE (Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble). Recent roles with PETE include Uncle Vanya (Vanya), Procedures for Saying No (Peter), [or, the whale] (Ahab), Enter THE NIGHT (Jack), Three Sisters (Tuzenbach), and R3 (Richard). Jacob directed PETE’s Deception Unit, All Well, Drowned Horse Tavern, and Song of the Dodo. Other credits include work at Shaking The Tree (A Doll’s House), Imago Theatre (The Homecoming, The Caretaker), and Liminal Performance Group (The Resurrectory). Jacob teaches at the Institute for Contemporary Performance and Pacific University.

ROBERT QUILLEN CAMP (writer/director) is a writer and director whose plays include the Obie Award winning Chekhov Lizardbrain, a collaboration with Pig Iron Theatre Company, All Hands, a collaboration with Hoi Polloi, and Dodeska Performance Ensemble's The Group. His other collaborations with PETE include Procedures for Saying No (2016) and the upcoming Deception Unit (2019). His work has toured nationally and internationally and been published in a variety of literary journals and anthologies. He has taught playwriting and theory at Brown University, Lewis and Clark College, and the University of California at Santa Barbara.

MIRANDA K HARDY (scenic and lighting design) is a lighting and set designer from NYC, now based in Portland, OR. She is an associate company member with PETE (Portland Experimental Theater Ensemble) designing many productions since 2012 including R3 (Drammy Award). Around Portland she has designed with Profile Theater, Portland Play House, Artists Repertory Theater, Lewis and Clark College, Reed College, Boom Arts. Other selected credits: Red Fly Blue Bottle (HERE Arts Ctr, EMPAC, Noorderzon Festival), Ko’olau (The Chocolate Factory, La Mama ETC), The Sewers(Incubator Arts, Dublin Fringe, SF Fringe), Beowulf, A Thousand Years of Baggage (Shotgun Players, Abron’s Arts, The Public, ART Boston) Untitled Mars [this title may change] (PS122, National Theater of Budapest), Bellona Destroyer of Cities (The Kitchen), The Cenci (Ohio Theater, Henry Hewes Nomination), Innova (Abrams Arts Center), Romeo And Juliet, R&J&Z (Opera House Arts), Murder In the Cathedral(St Joseph’s Brooklyn, Henry Hewes Nomination), four seasons as festival designer Festival Di Due Mondi (Spoleto, IT). She has company affiliation with Banana Bag & Bodice, recently reviving their classic Sandwich at the B House Shack in Beacon, NY. Miranda holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

JENNY AMPERSAND (costume design) is a designer based in Portland OR. Jenny has been making work with PETE since 2013 and during that time she has done everything from building extinct birds out of zippers and velvet, fashioning ocean creatures who work in an office, concocting the scent of an arctic ship, to turning Chekhov's Yelena into a disco ball. In addition to PETE, her work has been seen at Third Rail Rep, Profile Theater, Oregon Children's Theatre, Shaking the Tree, Liminal, Wobbly Dance, Phame, and Strawshop. She is often a guest designer at Reed College and guest teaches with ICP and Western Oregon University.

PETE (Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble)is a company of theatre artists who make new plays in a collaborative way. We train together and teach our work. We are committed to creative rigor, to the cultivation and enrichment of our local arts ecology, and to connecting with diverse audiences. We challenge established notions of theatrical form and content with innovative forms of practice, presentation and organization. We do all this to achieve a radical kind of presence shared in the performance event. PETE has been making performance since 2011. Over the past 7 years we have created four original devised works (Song of the Dodo, Drowned Horse Tavern, All Well and Deception Unit), two new plays ([or, the whale] by Juli Crockett and Procedures for Saying No by Robert Quillen Camp) and four revivals (R3, a new adaptation of Richard III, Chekhov’s The Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya, and Maria Irene Fornes’ Enter THE NIGHT). Our work has been produced at Northwest New Works at On the Boards, Summerfest at CoHo Theatre, Risk/Reward, Caldera, and PCS’s JAW Festival. Our work has been supported by grants from the Oregon Community Foundation, The Kinsman Foundation, The Miller Foundation, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, The Oregon Cultural Trust, and the Oregon Arts Commission among others. As part of our training institute, we offer community classes in the Viewpoints, Suzuki, Devised performance, Linklater Voice, Alexander and other performance trainings. Our year-long certificate program in performance (Institute for Contemporary Performance) offers 20 hours a week of training over 10 months culminating a festival of new works at the CoHo theatre. ​